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An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has caught up with the fact that open source web-based software exists, today announcing an open source project written in PHP is the first 'Certified for Windows' software that (a) follows an OSI-approved license and (b) runs via a webserver rather than operating as a native Windows executable.
The software in question is SilverStripe CMS, free software released under a BSD license, that is used to build and manage websites. Certification entails a third-party performing various tests and audits on the software and giving it the green light. If other open source projects can follow suit, this will be another step in getting business folk to see that open source is ready for enterprise use. And heck, maybe even a .NET application could now seek to be certified!"

And heck, maybe even a.NET application could now seek to be certified!

.NET applications have been certified for years. Spend a couple of minutes on Google and you will find examples for both the server platform [windowstricks.org] and the desktop edition [creativedocs.net].

As for SilverStripe, I imagine the reason that open source software would be rare on the list of certified products is that there are costs involved with doing it, and the kind of audience who generally use open souce products probably don't care a damn about any official "certified" logo.

There's a weird sort of proprietary software fan who always reacts with surprise when learning that some major corporation or government agency uses FLOSS. Even Microsoft uses FLOSS and Linux on some projects, though it doesn't much like to advertise that fact.

Microsoft actually lost a golden opportunity when hey treatead open source the way they did. There will always be demand for proprietary and open source, IBM got that right.

Microsoft on the other hand, decided to try to destroy open source and bury it like it did with other companies before (failing to see that this was a grassroot, difuse movement), basically alienating one generation of developers. Not simple developers mind you, but the superstars, the trend-setters, the guys who write tech-blogs, found innovative start-up and become managers and CIOs in big companies later on.

All of them are dead set against Microsoft and no amount of certification is going to change that now.